Posts Tagged ‘freelancers’

 Thanks to the wonders of freelancing, even if you do not know a single thing about building a website to promote your business to an online market, you can expand to an Internet platform and grow your bottom line exponentially. From the design of the site, to the placement of a shopping cart, to driving web traffic, to the development of page content, contract workers can complete all setup tasks and transform your current shop into an e-business overnight.

 First, you need to know what you would like your site to offer and what kind of experience you want visitors to have. What type of goods will you sell? Would you like informative articles to educate visitors about the kind of products you sell? Should the site make suggestions based on previous product pages the visitor has seen? Once you design the kind of shopping experience you want to offer, you are on your way to navigating the world of e-commerce.

 Though there are a few disadvantages to marketing your products and services online, there are also some clear advantages. The most obvious reward is that you immediately gain a worldwide presence that stretches far beyond your city limits – without you having the expense of outfitting stores in multiple locations. The cost is very minimal to start. Some online businesses cost less than $20 to launch. With such a low overhead and a low barrier to entry for those who do not have a lot of startup capital, merchants are able to sell internationally with little to no fuss. Of course, the low barrier also means that it is fairly easy for anyone to become a competitor, so launching an e-business will require constant monitoring of trends and benchmarks to stay ahead of the game.

 Having such a wide reach in an online business can also create a potential order fulfillment hazard for the small business. It can become very easy for demand to outgrow supply. The mass market that is organic to the online arena will require that a vendor has enough products or enough service time to fulfill orders. Smaller companies sometimes are not able to keep up with all the orders that come in daily. One solution that has worked for meeting costs has been to buy wholesale stock to sell online. Wholesale and dollar items placed on either auction or merchant sites require little investment and can yield great profits if the markup is high enough.

 In addition to cutting costs on the inventory side of an online business, there are some opportunities to cut costs in promoting the site, too. Advertising and marketing in real-time settings always involves some huge margins of error in which the money spent of campaigns cannot be recouped through sales. E-business is designed to be more streamlined because it targets the customers who are genuinely interested in your products. Advertising models like pay-per-click campaigns only require you to pay for promoting to visitors who have actually clicked on your ads. This model cuts waste. Affiliate marketing, in which freelancing bloggers and journalists place your ads on their sites and share profits, is also a targeted approach.

 Zeroing in on the right customers reduces the amount of time spent trying to secure sales that could never happen. Once you have a customer, though, you must do everything in your power to keep that customer coming back. The online world represents a unique opportunity to do that. Customer service in e-business is often more easily achieved than in person because there are simply more tools to meet customers’ needs. The Internet format provides the chance to be personable – just as agents are in real-time sales. Many sites present live freelance agents who chat with customers in a pop-up window to answer all questions and make transactions smooth. 

 Freelancers can assist the customer service process tremendously in e-business. Though you are always the boss, you can hire independent workers to complete the entire order fulfillment process – from answering questions about products to shipping and customer feedback. Imagine starting a business in which your primary role is to dream your dream of e-business ownership and then delegate the minute details to others. Freelancing empowers you to continue building and not be distracted by the many tasks that are required to operate.

 With freelancers in place, your earning potential as an online business is unlimited. You may even be able to accumulate enough free time to start a second or third business. Because it takes time to create a well-oiled machine and grow a business, the profit you can expect to see may not always be immediate. When the profits do finally come in, though, you will have built a business that can be run from anywhere. If you have the right freelancing structure in place, you can be on vacation and still watch your income grow. E-business is one of the most foolproof ways to move into a new income bracket. It is the virtual field of dreams: when you build it through freelancing, the customers will come

By Michael Rosenthal

For those of you who are struggling to make your mark in the Freelance Writing Industry, whether just starting out or experienced, no doubt you are well aware of the fact that rates of compensation have literally gone in the toilet over the past year since the US economy took the nose dive it did in the 4th quarter of 2008.

The harsh reality is that good quality freelancers are now getting raped by a huge variety of cheapskates and deadbeats out there – pure and simple.  For the sake of the situation at hand, I decided to speak my piece and divulge a few things that I have learned over the past several months.

Dredging through the Deadbeats

I recently came across a brilliant piece of prose composed by Angela Hoy of Writer’s Weekly (http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/003628_09132006.html) entitled ‘Do You Owe Writers Money? Advice For Deadbeats!’ and I highly recommend that any freelance writer novice or experienced  read this.  In this article, she defines the three different types of deadbeats and I am quoting her exact words:

‘Deadbeat #1‘- someone who is actually not a real deadbeat. This is someone who started a business, got in over his or her head, and is desperately trying to earn the money to pay off the mounting bills.

‘Deadbeat #2‘ – someone who had good intentions initially, but who now thinks he doesn’t have to pay his bills because he’s not making any money.

‘Deadbeat #3‘ – a true criminal who may have started out like deadbeats number 1 or 2, but who now intentionally hires freelancers with no intention of paying them at all.

It is obviously Deadbeats #2 and #3 that I am the most concerned with where my fellow freelancers are concerned.  My website partner and I have a client who is currently walking that fine line between #2 and #3 because he is no longer responding to our requests for payment with much more than lame excuses that even a 5th grader can see through.  His excuses fall somewhere between blatant lies and just a big pile of manure.

My advice here is exactly what Angela Hoy wrote in her article, regarding Deadbeats #2 and #3, and I quote:

If you are deadbeat #2, you should know that what you’re doing is wrong and, depending on your actions, maybe even illegal. You can’t hire someone and then simply decide not to pay them because your income has dried up. You can learn a few things from #1. Be respectable, have integrity, and don’t ruin your reputation or get dragged into court because you made a mistake. Clean up your mess respectably by apologizing and paying your bills and then move on.

If you are Deadbeat #3, know that we and our fellow writing websites, discussion lists, and forums are all over you. If you think you can hire one of our own and not pay them, and get away Scott free, think again. We’re going to alert everyone we can of your deadbeat status. We’re going to publicize your website, your publication name, and your name as well. Once that happens, you can bet your name will forever be synonymous with the word DEADBEAT because that’s exactly what you are.

The point I’m trying to make is a simple one  BE CAREFUL in your business dealings.  My advice is to try and get a 50% on any new business that comes your way.  At least you get some kind of compensation if they turn out to be Deadbeat #2 or #3 above.

Compensation is in the Crapper

Those of you who have gone to online freelance bid boards to find consistent work have probably witnessed how badly freelance writing rates have declined.  Not only are the rates of pay at an all time low, they are just demeaning.  The sad part about all of this is that writers are stooping to new lows and prostituting their talents for worse than slavery wages in the process.  This hasn’t helped the issue either.

In fact, it only makes things worse when people are willing to work all day for only $5 or $10 and sadly, that is exactly what has been going on.  If you’re in that boat, I highly recommend you bail and swim for shore because you are not helping the industry better itself.  In fact, you are only hurting your fellow writers so let your conscience mull that one over for a while.

The Bottom Line

Remember first and foremost the #1 rule in the freelance writing industry PROTECT YOUR INTERESTS!  The following is a list of 6 steps to always perform anytime you are working for a client, especially if this is a first-time project and new client:

• Never let that potential client know that you are inexperienced or just starting out – I cannot stress the importance of this enough.  Conduct yourself in a manner that says you have the experience and the talent to produce top quality content for that client.  Letting that client know that you are an amateur empowers them and enables them to walk all over you throughout your project.

• Never allow any major changes in the midst of a project – as ruthless as this may sound, if the client decides to change the content or scope of the project, charge them a fee.  The amount of the fee will depend on deep you have gotten into the project.  I always employ the 50% rule from the very beginning.

• A Revision does not mean Re-writing the entire content – I’ve known freelancers who just let clients lead them around by the nose on this one.  Revising an article or revisions to the content should be anticipated.  It’s just the nature of the beast with freelance writing.  However, depending on the number of words involved, you never want to rewrite more than 20% of the content without charging an additional fee.  The average article is typically 400-500 words in length.  So that means revising would entail rewriting 80-100 words.

• I want to bring up a critical point about this.  You may need to be very forceful about this with some clients, but you definitely need to make this known right up front before that client ever sends you that first assignment or project.  Remember that it is the client’s responsibility to give you concise directions and critical need-to-know information in the initial instructions.  Clients are notorious for not being specific about what they want and then you wind up rewriting an entire piece because you didn’t do the job correctly.

• Never begin a new project for a client if they haven’t paid you for the prior one – I have experienced this so I can tell you first hand that you need to be firm when it comes to getting paid on all prior work.  I had a client when I was first starting out that would have me do 3 to 5 short articles at a time and paid religiously.  The first time I took on a bigger project of about 20 longer articles, I never saw my money despite providing him with all that content.  So you need to protect yourself on this, also.

• Never be afraid to ask for 50% up front.  If the client flakes on you, at least you will have gotten some compensation.  Additionally, if they are slow paying clients, you may want to think about asking for 100% payment up front.  In the meantime, if you feel that you will be risking losing a client, then you should also be scouting around for a replacement client so you don’t lose out altogether.

• Start firm in the beginning and remain firm throughout the project – this relates to all of the above suggestions.  If you don’t that client will find every opportunity they can to just walk all over you, so state your terms from the beginning and make the client adhere to them all the way through the project.  Most importantly – NEVER, NEVER, NEVER let the client talk you down on your fees.

• Whenever possible, prepare a contract that is legal and binding – I cannot emphasize this enough.  Without this tool, you have no chance of ever getting paid.  Granted, the legal process involved with this can oftentimes be lengthy and tedious, but at least you will have some leverage for getting compensated.  There are no guarantees that you will get paid, but having a contract is good insurance and just makes sense.

In this ‘small‘ post we thought  to recap some of the techniques that can be used to market your new site. Most of these are already known, but it is always   nice to have all of them collected in one place :

• Yahoo Answers.

Answering questions at http://answers.yahoo.com can be proven an extremely efficient marketing strategy. People there leave thousands of questions and many of them remain unanswered. Answering questions, and solving problems in a category similar to your line of business (i.e. Computer Engineer, SEO, marketing, work from home, business models) can easily make you an ‘expert’ of the specific field. Being the expert means that people will want to actually visit your site and learn more. Further to this answering questions on yahoo answers can produce a number of backlinks for your site.

MySpace

MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users and over 300.000 new signups every daily. Getting this for a fact, you could considered that the returns from a successful MySpace campaign could be huge. So the more ‘friends’ you have on MySpace the better the changes you have to transform some of them into customers. First of all create a Profile using CSS to style your MySpace profile as close as possible to the site that you want to market (including any logos). Secondly start adding targetted friends by using the MySpace searching facility (i.e. by using keywords like freelancer,marketing). Some general advices on how you will go on are :

• Never spam
• Avoid the use of bot friends adders because you could easily get banned.
• Join as many relevant groups as possible and participate within the groups.
• Post interesting bulletins that provide useful information
• Send friend requests to users within the groups you’ve joined.
• Use graphics in your posts to catch the attention of the reader.
• Use catchy titles, anything boring will be ignored

Yahoo Groups

Yahoo Groups ( http://groups.yahoo.com/) is a great place for people to talk and exchange ideas. You can search and join yahoo groups , which are immediate related with your site (i.e. Freelancers, Wholesale,stocked products) and start spreading the word for you new web site. Note  that if a group has 2,000 members, and you post a message, you will  have  potential 2,000 users reading your message and maybe visiting your site. Members of the groups are always interested to learn information on new sites and ideas.

If you want to make group users even more interested on your site, you can offer some free content and tools on them. This will make your site even more appealing to them.

You can even create you own group and start posting. People which are interested in the subjects you post will became members of your group.

Stumbleupon.com

StubmleUpon is a great site, which allows people to share stories, information and links. Download the stumbleupon toolbar and ensure you click “I like this” to all of your websites, and have your friends and family do the same and click the “I like this” to all your sites. Also create pages specifically for stumbleupon that either is funny and odd, which can range from funny pictures to funny videos. This works well since Stumbleupon users love to browse sites that have odd and funny stuff, or even free stuff would work good as well.

Forum linking

Try to find ‘Do-follow‘ forums that are relevant with your site(s) subject and register. In all forums that you are becoming a member of, include your web sites url in signature of your profile. Having created your signature, start posting!! Create new subjects or reply to existing threats and use your preferred keywords within the links or perhaps catchy titles to entice clicks. Be sure not to SPAM otherwise you can get banned.

Blog commenting

Blog commenting is a great way to advertise your site and also gain some backlinks. It is usually in the center of many link building strategies followed today. You can easily promote your site, by identifying related blogs and comment on their posts. In most blogs you can include the URL of your site during the commenting procedure. Two things that you must note here is that in order to get backlinks, the blogs must be do-follow, and that you must make sure that your comments provide some value to the users of the blog (i.e. just don’t leave a post if you have nothing to add). You can easily find such blogs by simple searching the Google :

http://followlist.com/
http://www.stephanmiller.com/the-ultimate-dofollow-blog-list/

Craigslist.org

Craigslist is a great place to promote your web site and service. It allows you to submit your free ads Frelance jobs, freelance resources, freelancers, freelancing,consultants, consulting, contractors;but be sure not to spam it. Just one or two ads per week in a few select cities will do the trick. Don’t submit too many adds because you could be flagged or labeled as spam. As afinal note ensure to use catchy titles to ensure your ad is read.

Site maps

Sitemaps is the best way to help search engine crawl your site. If you want to have high rankings you must definitely include a site map in your sites and submit it to google. You can create a free site map using the following site.

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

When finished, then upload it to your site, then submit it to

Google using the link below: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview?hl=en

Submit your sitemaps using Yahoo Site Explorer, similar format to

Google Webmaster Tools http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Directories Submission

Directories is one of the oldest way to get backlinks. Most Web admins already do this, but just in case you haven’t, you should submit to directories. A good list of directories can be found in:

http://strongestlinks.com/directories.php

Try to submit your site to high PR Do Follow directories. You can easily check if the directory is a Do Follow by clicking on a link inside the directory and checking on its properties. If it says ‘No follow’ then this is not a Do follow directory and you can skip it.

A site with many do follow directories is: http://squidooeventlog.com/dofollow-directories/

When you submitting to directories, ensure that the title and description of you submission is carefully selected. The words to be used there is what the Search Engines use to index your site. You can use the Web Masters Keyword analysis tools ( http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml ) to test the words that you must include your submission.

Tell a Friend

A Tell-a-Friend script must be installed on your site. These scripts enable you users to access the email/facebook/twitter/myspace accounts and massively send invitations for your site to their friends. If you have a joomla / Drupa / WordPress based site, it is very easy to download an install a module or widget/plugin for this. For all other sites you can download a PHP script for this. For any case OpenInviter is a nice and free option (http://openinviter.com/)

Search Engine Optimization

The way you site is structure and build is very important. There are a number of programming good and bad practices that can help you gain good search result positions. Meta tags, page names, breadcrumbs, alt text on images, are just few examples. SEO is an important aspect of any new web site and must be taken seriously. Some sites that contain really useful advice on this are :

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=3
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12
http://forums.seochat.com/
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/

Squidoo.com

Squidoo.com is a free popular platform that allows you to create overview pages. These pages, called lenses, usually simulate small one page blogs and include articles, photographs, videos and links. Such lenses could be a great marketing tool for you site. You can create a lense in an subject similar to your new site. There you could post articles and links to your site.

Social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites are really important for your new marketing strategy. People use them to share the Hyperlinks and Interesting sites they discovered on the Net. Posting your web site to these can create a stream of new visitors and also new back-links.

• http://del.icio.us/ PageRank: 8/10
• http://www.furl.net/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.simpy.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://del.icio.us/ PageRank: 8/10
• http://www.backflip.com/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.blinklist.com/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://bluedot.us/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://de.lirio.us/bookmarks/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.diigo.com/user/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.shadows.com/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.markaboo.com/ PageRank: 5/10
• http://ma.gnolia.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://linkagogo.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://netvouz.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.mister-wong.de/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.spurl.net/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.rawsugar.com/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.stumbleupon.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.digg.com/ PageRank: 8/10
• http://www.blogmarks.net/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.netvouz.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.taggly.com/ PageRank: 5/10
• http://www.lookmarks.com/ PageRank: 5/10

Article Promotion

Creating articles related to the subject area of your site and submitting them to the numerous free article directories can give you a number of backlinks. Make sure to use keyword analysis tools, in order to select the keywords that you will use in these articles. Some examples of such article directories are:

• http://www.thearticlesarchive.com
• http://www.ezinearticles.com
• http://www.goarticles.com
• http://www.articlecity.com .

Listen to your Users.

As a new site you are only going to have few users/visitors. One of things that will make them return back to you is to ensure that they can communicate their opinions /ideas/thoughts regarding your site with you (aka that their voice is heard). This will make them feel more comfortably with your site and feel that they participate in the process of making it better.

The information collected from such processes greatly helps in improving your site, because they can be used as bug reports and/or features requirements, and also assist in increasing the number of returning visitors.

To do this you can either include a feedback form on your site, or even better use one of the Feedback Management services that exist today (i.e. http://www.uservoice.com/ )

Alexa.com

Alexa is a popular place to allow users and provide reviews for other sites . You can register and regularly review popular websites on Alexa.com, making sure that at the end of your review you will add the URL of your site. It may not hyperlink automatically but may still bring some traffic to your site.

Newsletter

A newsletter box on your website that will allow all visitors to subscribe and receive updates. You must build a regular newsletter and inform your users, o new offers, changes and products. This will ensure that your users will never forget the site and increase the number of returning visitors. You can also have your users register their Date Of Birth and automatically send them an electronic birthday card.

You can use an email marketing service in order to automated some parts of this process. Some examples are: aweber.com, getresponse.com, constantcontact.com for the newsletter subscriptions.

Pay per Click search engines

I’ve listed this due to the fact most of you probably already know this , but I can’t have a list of marketing techniques without mentioning PPC. Google Adwords, Microsoft Ad Center and Yahoo Search Marketing are the big three. Other options are SearchFeed.com, Goclick.com.

For a analytical list of pay per click search engines see link below:

http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/

Twitter

One of the latest trends in Marketing is Twitter.com, the microblogging platform. You can create a twitter account for your site, register you site address and description (i.e. The free online library) in your new Twitter account profile and start twitting. Start posting things (i.e. articles,photographs,videos,news) that are of interest to you and related to your site. If you have a blog you can automated this process by using special WordPress pluings and Joomla components.

People that are interested in your postings are going to soon become your followers. Everything you post can be seen by all of your followers, which in their turn can retwitt it in order to share it with their followers (i.e. imagine that you have 1000 followers and each one of them has another 1000 followers, Can you see the big picture ?) Having a big number of followers can greatly help you in promoting your products and services.

Facebook Fan Page

Facebook currently offers a great place to promote your products and service. Just consider the case that Facebook has more than 60 million active users. The returns from using facebook as a marketing platform can be high. There are tons of different ways that you can advertise over Facebook.

Fan Pages

It is very easy to create a Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages) and invite your friends (and their friends) to became fans of your page. In a while you will see that your fans pages can easily grow into having thousands of fans. This will greatly help you with branding your new site and products.

Facebook Application

You can create, or have a freelancer do it for you,or even buy, a silly small Facebook application. Such applications could include, games, puzzles , quizzes ,jokes of the day or anything that a user will want have and share with his friend. These application could be distributed around your friends and their friends( following the pattern of viral process) for free (yes free!!! if its free people will definitely want to try it). But in this application you could include a banner, the colors, and the logos of your Web Site. This is what Branding is all about.

Facebook Adverts

Final but not least, you could use the Facebook Advertising System (similar to Google’s ) to create a facebook banner for your new site. The huge difference with other systems is that facebook allows you to control the target audience of your advert (e.g. age,country,job,title)

Blog

It’s a proven fact that search engines love blogs. The question we should ask ourselves is why do they love blogs? It’s pretty simple, search engines love to search and find new quality content. Search Engines target to index high quality novel information . But ensure that the content that you post on your blog is original. Search engines do not like to see articles or content that already exists on thousands of other sites. You must update your content regularly in order to ensure better Search Engine Ranking.

But blogs are not only for search engines. Having a blog that includes good quality content will increase you user returning rates. Users may not come to your site to buy, but they will come to read. Even so, your site still will get targeted traffic, and thus higher rankings and publicity.

There are many free sites on the Internet that will allow you to create your own blog and they will host it for you. Some examples are :

• http://www.blogger.com
• http://www.ebloggy.com/
• http://www.aeonity.com/

If you are like me, you will prefer to host your own blog, so you will nee to find your own hosting solution and domain and then download and install a blog engine like WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com).

Having completed your blog, now it the time to start advertising. There are a number of directories out there which are targeted to blog owners. It will be quite a strong marketing policy to submit your blog to these Directories. Some examples are:

• Blogarama Link: http://www.blogarama.com
• Blogdigger Link: http://www.blogdigger.com
• Blog Catalog Link: http://www.blogcatalog.com
• Blog Hub Link: http://www.bloghub.com
• Blog Rankings Link: http://www.blogrankings.com
• Blog Search Engine Link: http://www.blogsearchengine.com
• Blog Wise Link: http://www.blogwise.com
• Blog Lines Link: http://www.bloogz.com
• Blog Pulse Link: http://www.blogpulse.com
• Blog Universe Link: http://www.bloguniverse.com
• Blog TreeBlogarama Link: http://www.blogarama.com
• Blogdigger Link: http://www.blogdigger.com
• Blog Catalog Link: http://www.blogcatalog.com
• Blog Hub Link: http://www.bloghub.com
• Blog Rankings Link: http://www.blogrankings.com
• Blog Street Link: http://www.blogstreet.com
• Blog Wise Link: http://www.blogwise.com
• Globe Of Blogs: Link: http://www.globeofblogs.com

Many individuals who offer services in a specific industry and are experts at what they do take up freelance work on the side. Their motive may be to increase income or build upon their resume. Regardless, as a business owner looking for experts to work for your company, you will benefit from outsourcing to freelancers. Below are three main advantages to outsourcing to freelancers.

Save Resources and Save Money

Hiring people to work from your office means that you have to spend more time, money and effort. You will spend money on software, Internet, office space and, not to mention, training. These costs will add up and it is more resourceful for you to outsource to freelancers. Freelancers who work from home have all the tools and knowledge to do the job.

Spending Time On Important Projects

Another advantage of outsourcing is being able to have more value for your time. Repetitive, tedious and certain technical tasks can be handled by freelancers. This way, you will spend more time on marketing, managing and making money.

Work With Experts

Why give someone a salary-based job, train them for three months and have them under-perform when you can work with experts? Outsourcing allows you to pay individuals on a project basis for a certain amount of time because they know what they are doing. You can take advantage of their knowledge for the specific task at hand. This allows you to work with multiple people for less money but more targeted expertise.

The job of a free agent is always challenging as well as exciting. For people that prefer to have challenges and excitement in their professional career, freelancing is just best for them. Most of the time a freelancer’s life is full of rewards. This way of working allows you to select your own hours to accomplish your assignments and projects.

There are quite a lot of people that want to follow the freelancing way while working for a traditional job. They are usually fed up with the 9 to 5 schedule, the reports, the office bureaucracy, and the office politics which lets put it simple in many ways they don’t allow you to complete the work. So the problem with many professionals today is that although they are overwhelmed with the advantages of being a freelancer they are also confused with the ways to start.

Working from home, can help you earn plenty of money. Freelancing gives you the ability to participate in many individual projects whenever this is required. By getting involved into many freelance projects you will dramatically increase your revenue but of course your work-hours will also increase. And this is what the freelancing career is all about in reality, flexibility and autonomy. So if you need more money you work more hours, if not you can end up working a couple of hours and still earn enough money to have a decent living. So in reality freelancing gives you the flexibility of being able to work only the hours you want, at least I don’t know any other job that allows you to get up 11:00 in the morning make your coffee and sit on the computer wearing your athletics , or even have a couple of hours break to socialize with friends. Added to this is that freelancers are usually getting paid more than employees, for the same type of jobs.

Freelancers have chosen a conscious lifestyle and that is the most exciting part for any freelancing job. More often they want to create a perfect balance between their social life and professional career in order to grab the right control. Well, for a freelancer the money earnings are always an equation on which the time he spends for assignments is a critical factor.

But unfortunately freelancing does not come only with advantages. Freelancers cannot enjoy the job security employees have (although with the today’s recession you can never be secure). As a freelancer no one will pay for your training, certification or relocation, and these are usually required by most employers require. Last but not least consider some of the thinks that employees take them for granted while freelancers need to pay for them, like insurance, corporate computer cell phone and sometimes corporate car, and of course pay for your vacations or give you a bonus even if no project exist.

On the other hand creating freelance projects and hiring freelance workers is of great benefit for the employers also. In reality in most cases sitting 8 hours a day in small cubicles and getting paid a fixed salary is simple unproductive. Most employees are able to work only with 20%-40% efficiency in a corporate environment. This efficiency level is enough to show that most corporate workers in reality spend only 2 – 4 hours of work daily. Employers now are asked to pay for electricity, office rent, furniture, sometimes employee’s lunches, pay for training and many other daily operational expenses. Employers benefit much more by hiring freelancers and building virtual teams. Using freelancers will dramatically reduce their operational expenses and increase productivity.

A report from Freelance Switch provides great statistics that were produced from a survey included 3700 freelancers (http://freelanceswitch.com/general/3700-freelancers-surveyed-the-results-are-here/)